TV REVIEW : ‘Talking Heads’ Speaks Volumes

Don’t be put off by the banal title “Talking Heads,” a BBC series of dramatic monologues that debuts tonight on Channel 28 at 10.

The 30- to 40-minute episodes, which will be aired in pairs over the next three Thursday evenings, each feature a character alone at home in a confiding mood, creating a life out of monologue, memory, loneliness and body language.

The unique series was written and produced in 1987 by Alan Bennett, who is featured in tonight’s opening show (“A Chip in the Sugar”) about a dependent, middle-aged son living with a mother who alarms him by falling for a slick suitor.

The camera in all these deceptively uneventful stories serves as an unseen, silent friend or neighbor. The viewing experience is like going to a confessional--and you’re the priest.

The five monologues that follow Bennett tonight are all from women, most of them characters in the late afternoons of their bleak lives. They’re either resigned to their fates or quietly raging against the emptiness that floods their cozy rooms with drowsy sunlight.

The British actresses are a mix of familiar names (Maggie Smith and Julie Walters) to the comparatively unfamiliar (Stephanie Cole, Patricia Routledge and Thora Hird). Their performances are richly shaded and touching without lapsing into sentimentality.

(The Maggie Smith drama, which concludes the series May 2, originally aired on “Masterpiece Theatre” last year.)

Tonight’s second episode (“Soldiering On”), featuring Cole as a serene widow who gradually loses all her assets, is almost painful.

Next week, Routledge’s fussy “A Lady of Letters” (who winds up incarcerated for her perversity!) is sharply contrasted with the series’ certified oddball, “Her Big Chance,” with Walters (“Educating Rita”) hilariously playing a porn actress who convinces herself she’s doing serious drama.

The British accents in two cases are terribly hard to understand for an American ear. Missing even 10-20% of the words, as you do in the Walters and Hird episodes, is irksome.

But the writing is so good and the simplicity of the approach so direct and fresh that “Talking Heads” is rather like untapping something new on television.